08/30/2014

When 'Discipline' doesn't mean 'Bondage'

xkcd with a reflection on how writing skills are developed ... or not.

In his mouseover, which you'd have to visit the actual site to see, he speculates that -- leaving aside kids who love to write and taking average kids as a group -- a generation that conducts much of their social interaction in writing is bound to have an advantage over one for whom it was an assigned task, even though the social interaction was informal while the assigned task is carefully monitored and mentored.

He suggests, if we could, comparing whole-class-assignment writing, like "everyone write a letter to the president," from decades ago to the same assignment today, so that we would be seeing the full spectrum and not just samples from the kids who love to write.

I can't furnish a complete answer, because the "class-assignment" stuff I get is from fourth and fifth graders, while the willing-writer material I see comes from middle schoolers, so there is a difference in both their ages and in their length of exposure to social media, as well as their tendency to self-select things they're good at.

He's certainly correct that Joyce was informal in how he expressed himself in private writing, and if you had a stack of his letters to Nora mixed with Robert Browning's letters to Elizabeth B., you wouldn't have much trouble sorting them.

And, as Munroe suggests, Joyce's flamboyant disregard for formality in his private writing is reflected in the prose adventure of Ulysses, and it is not simply wrong but would be absolutely foolish to call the book undisciplined simply because it doesn't follow the formal structure in which novels were written up to that time.

Mistaking "following the template" for "being disciplined" is not simply ignorant but kind of sad, the mark of a hide-bound, gray spirit that has little understanding of creativity, art or, well, life itsownself.

In fact, one of the great Kingsfieldian professors of my college life was at once a deeply conservative Irish Catholic and an absolute Joyce fanatic, and, if he was too -- in Joyce's term -- "priest-ridden" to grasp all the emotional and sexual implications behind the characters and actions, he was yet fascinated by the combination of scholarship, precision and insouciance with which Joyce constructed his prose.

However, I can only imagine the horror with which the old fellow would view texting, had he lived long enough to have students with smartphones. It's a collection of dots that grammar nazis will never connect.

But whether they get it or not, there is more discipline in Joyce, as he casts off traditional formats, than there is in poor old Scott Fitzgerald, not only aping plot and character elements of Stover at Yale (and thus, Tom Brown at Oxford, which Johnson was aping) for his breakthrough best seller, but then, throughout his career, diligently laboring to write what he thought a good novel should sound like based on the good novels he'd read.

Which, by the way, gets you praise from professors and critics in much the same way that a new comic strip that looks just like Zits or looks just like the Far Side or looks just like Calvin and Hobbes will be picked up by editors who see that Cul de Sac doesn't look like anything they've ever seen before and so isn't "good."

It doesn't mean that those exemplars are not "good." They are.

It means that consciously, or even unconsciously, duplicating their style isn't.

But it's hard to overcome the notion that good cartoons don't have all that scratchy art, just as it's hard to overcome the notion that good writers don't say "lol" or "brb."

smh

Kenosha update:

You don't have to come to the festival to get hold of some art. Part of the mission is not only to bring cartooning to the community, but to let cartooning benefit community charities.

More details here, even more to come, but note that the on-line part, which is more of a straight fundraising sale than an auction, begins Sept 13 and that items will change throughout the 12 days, so you should visit more than once.

We ask you to take off your “I’ve gotta get a deal” hat and put on your “I’d like to help out as much as I can” hat and be generous with your bids! -- Anne Morse-Hambrock

Now here's a song for 'good' artists and writers:

Comments

You can follow this conversation by subscribing to the comment feed for this post.

When I started a blog of my own, I had fun exploring the possibilities of written digressions. Anything I wrote over 100 words contained a BUNCH of parentheses, em-dashes, semi-colons and 'three-dots', often in combination as part of a long-but-not-technically-run-on sentence. After that writing helped me sell some freelance writing to a Major Media Website (which shall remain nameless), the first, second and fourth notes I got from editors were telling me to "be more straightforward". (The third was "put the period inside the quotation mark".)

I read Ulysses as a senior in high school and was not so much amazed by the changes in point of view or the stream of consciousness so much as I was by the structural digressions.

The idea of a chapter made up of short pieces broken up with headlines blew my mind. Of course, I probably had no idea what Stephen was talking about as he walked by the sea and I missed a lot of Bloom's thoughts, but it was the way Joyce just stopped telling the story and started telling it in a totally other way that flipped me out.

I'd read Catcher by then and thought Holden Caulfield was a rebel, but I didn't think Salinger was. Having the author be the rebel was completely different.

What's so funny?

I read some 175 or more comics a day. Each day, I post a strip or two here that made me laugh, made me think or impressed me with its artistry. It's my hope that you'll see some new strips here and decide to follow that artist's work, and perhaps even to support that work by purchasing a collection of strips. But, mostly, I hope you'll find this a place to get a laugh or share a thought each day. After all, comic strips are a very demanding art form, but the ultimate point of all that work and all those deadlines is to give readers a little pleasure each day.
If you find a comic hard to read, clicking on it will open a slightly larger version. All comics here are copyrighted by their creators. -- Mike Peterson

The Prime Directive

The Prime Directive is that we don't single out comics for snark and abuse. This may change once I've won a couple of Pulitzers and a Reuben or two.

Twitteronomy

Want a daily reminder and link? My Twitter handle is @ComicStripOTD and I promise that you will never hear about what I had for lunch or the cute thing the dog said.

Search

Independent publishers

Independent comic collectionsNot all cartoonists market their collections through Amazon. Here's where cartoonists can list their independently published, and marketed, collections and where fans can find, and buy, them.

Cartoon MovementAn international site with sociopolitical cartoons from around the world, curated by Dutch cartoonist Tjeerd Royaards. A real mix of impressionistic panels and short-form graphic journalism.

AfricartoonsCartoons from across Africa, which has an extremely lively cartooning culture. Most of the material requires you to be on top of African current events and political personalities, but even when you're not sure of the specifics, there's some creative stuff to envy in the lively nature of the art form as practiced there.

GoComics.com

GoComics.comUniversal Press Syndicate's page. You can click on each strip and read for free, but for $11.88 a year, you can create your own page of strips and also avoid pop-ups. It's worth it.

Comics Kingdom

Comics KingdomKing Features' site, with free comics if you don't mind a truncated service, or a very good paid site for $20 a year. Some of the benefits, including Vintage strips, require that paid subscription. It's worth it.